Ulster’s John Andrew mindful of red-card threat

The red cards both against Wales arguably cost their teams victory: O’Mahony received a three-match ban with Fagerson misses the rest of the tournament after getting a four-match ban.

Ulster return to action against Glasgow in the Pro14 after a five week lay-off and hooker John Andrew knows the players need to be mindful of how they charge into rucks to clear out the opposition.

“When you slow it down frame by frame it can look like you’ve had a lifetime to make a decision but stuff is happening in split seconds, pictures are changing and like when you’re attacking you’re trying to get quick ball, you’re trying to stop someone stealing the ball,” stated Andrew.

“And when you’re in the defence, you’re doing the opposite so at times there can be those rugby collisions as people have called them in the past, but you know you can’t go and make contact with someone’s head with your shoulder or whatever, so with those two red cards no-one’s done that on purpose but it highlights how extra careful you’ve got to be.

“It can tend to happen if you’re a bit late to the ruck or you haven’t arrived at the perfect space or something like that.

“It’s coached but as I say it’s a rugby game and things change right in front of you and I think everyone is going to be hyper aware of it now and try and do their best to win the ball, but not get your team down to 14 men for 10 minutes or 60 minutes.”

The hooker scored a hat-trick of tries against Edinburgh the last time Ulster visited Scotland and believes Glasgow’s 4G pitch shouldn’t pose any problems to Dan McFarland’s side.

“They are completely different to what we play on but more teams now have them,” he said.

“We have the facility to train on artificial pitches, there’s some things around footing when it comes to scrums and mauls that are different but I don’t think we’ve any problem with them.

“They give you good footing and it gives you a good chance to play running rugby if the weather’s not great, so it was maybe more of an issue a few years ago when there were only one or two in the league and we never trained on any of them, but I don’t think it’s much of a problem anymore.”

During the break Andrew signed at new two-year contract to stay at Kingspan Stadium until June 2023.

“It’s great to have a bit of security for the next two years going forward and in a world at the minute where plenty of people don’t know what’s happening week-to-week, let alone year to year.

“I’m really happy to have got that signed and it’s sort of one less thing to worry about.

“When we’re playing rugby we’re really lucky that we get to do this, there’s no grassroots rugby here at the moment so we know how fortunate we are to be able to do this.

“It’s nice to know my future for the next couple of years but it’s back to concentrating on the week-to-week stuff now.”

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